


Agelast: The Girl

by casuallyserious



Series: Agelast [1]
Category: Agelast - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Original Fiction, POV First Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:48:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23019568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/casuallyserious/pseuds/casuallyserious
Summary: I've seen many things on the road, not all of them pleasant. I've learned to survive, no matter the cost.
Series: Agelast [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1654438





	Agelast: The Girl

It had been a while since I’d been able to find some clean water to drink. I had some idea of what would happen to me if I drank the dirty stuff from the rivers, but I was in no hurry to find out for sure. I didn't want to be held up by sickness if I could help it. I had places to be.

There was this woman, though. She was small, not much to look at. She didn’t smile, obviously, but she had a sort of lightness around her eyes. It looked as if somehow the evils of this world hadn’t quite touched her yet. She found me on my worst day yet, a strange man leaning heavily against a tree on the side of the road, dehydrated, and exhausted. I guess I must have tensed up when she reached into her pack, because she paused to swipe two fingers over her mouth, a smile to replace the ones we lost. She pulled a battered plastic water bottle from her bag and rolled it towards me. I snatched it up and chugged it as fast as I could. She rolled me another one, and I drank that one too. This little wisp of a thing rolled me three water bottles. Most folks are likely to shoot you over a drop nowadays, and here she was handing it out like its’ worth was lost on her. It was a such a simple kindness in a harsh world, and I was grateful for it.

We shared food and a fire that night. She sang as I cooked the rabbit she had caught the day before, and as we ate I watched the sparks from the fire leap into the dark sky, free and bright. 

Like her.

* * *

I stayed awake even after she had fallen asleep, watching the fire, listening to the wind in the trees, listening to her breathe. After a while I guess I dozed off too.

It was still dark when I woke to rustling in the trees not too far off. The fire had burned low, but I could still make out the girls face in the darkness. She was fast asleep. I grabbed my pack and ducked into the bushes right as a group of those happy bastards burst through the treeline, carrying torches and knives, giggling like maniacs. Once they saw her in the fading firelight, they made a beeline for the girl. She screamed as she woke up with their hands on her in the dark. She screamed as they clawed at her skin, as they hauled her over to the trees. She screamed until she couldn't anymore.

One of the men grabbed her leg, attempting to bind it with rope, but she kicked him in the face and he fell backwards into the sea of his fellows. Another man took his place, then another and another, until they swarmed over her like ants. Two men threw handfuls of rope over neighboring tree branches, and as the hoard pulled away, so did the rope, hauling the girl into the air. She screamed again as her shoulders were wrenched up past her head, making her wrists strain against the weight of her entire body. 

The men circled her like vultures, their knives glinting in the torchlight. She was crying now, begging them to let her go. The men ignored her. To them she was nothing but their prey, and they were hungry. I crouched there in the bushes for what seemed like hours as they hacked at her clothes, tore at her skin, pulled on her hair. She was just meat to them. To her credit, she fought these men as well as she could, but eventually the pain and exhaustion caused her to go limp in their arms. Those monsters tried everything to rouse her again: they used their hands, their teeth, but not even the knives were enough to make their plaything squirm anymore. They howled then, all of them together making an unearthly noise in the night. I couldn't decide if it was meant to be sorrowful or victorious.

They left the girl hanging by her arms in the trees and wandered back into the forest. I waited until their voices had faded away before I climbed out of the bushes and back into the dim light of the campfire and the abandoned torches. The men had torn the camp to pieces. The remains of the girls clothes were tossed on the dirt, covering her discarded bag, which had been thrown against the trunk of a tree by her feet in the struggle to pin her down. 

I walked over to the tree and bent down, but froze, hand outstretched, when I heard her breathing. I turned to see the girl staring at me, one eye almost swollen shut. She tried to speak, but her screaming had left her throat as shredded as the rest of her. I stood, our eyes level, and leaned in closer to hear her.

“Help me.” she whispered.

Her eyes were red from crying. I looked up at her arms; they were bruised a deep purple and the joints of her wrists and her shoulders had pulled loose from their sockets under the stress. Her body was covered in deep cuts, long and bleeding. The blood ran down her body, naked in the dark, and dripped from her toes in wet, heavy pats into the dirt. 

I bent back down and pulled the rest of her water out of the ragged remains of her pack. Looking back into her eyes, her wide pleading eyes, I swiped my first two fingers across my lips in a mock smile. She began to cry again, but I had already turned away, retracing my steps through the trees and back onto the road. I had places to be, you see. 


End file.
